The present invention relates to the field of numeric data processors and in particular, relates to integrated circuit, floating point numerical processors capable of mixed precision calculations, mixed mode arithmetic calculations and rounding operations.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Prior art arithmetic processors, particularly integrated circuit processors, are characterized by various artifacts of inaccuracy, unreliability and lack of safety during floating point calculations. For example, a typical prior art, integrated circuit process is capable of performing transcendental mathematical operations, including square root, in such a manner that the result is not only obtained relatively slowly, often only with software assistance, but subject to the possibility of multiple rounding errors in intermediate results leading to an inaccurate final answer and with no internal mechanism within the processor to either detect or correct the rounding errors. In addition, prior art processors generally cannot operate with mixed mode operands or can do so only with the substantial risk of producing erroneous results.
What is needed then is an arithmetic processor having sufficient internal precision to make quick, accurate and reliable calculations of single and double precision integers and floating point quantities with internal means to deal with rounding errors and other arithmetic exceptions or special cases such as zero and infinity arithmetic.